"We f***** up in Ohio," she admitted. "In Ohio, they are obsessed, and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win.

"She is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything," Ms Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her remark.

UPDATE: The Scotsman response: "If a conversation is to be off the record, that agreement is usually thrashed out before the interview begins. Sometimes, public figures say something and then attempt to retract it by insisting it was 'off the record' after the event. But by then, it is too late, particularly if it is in the public interest that the story be published. In this instance, Samantha Power was promoting her book, and it was established in advance that the interview was on the record."

Share this Article

Reader Comments (11)

Pages

1

WHO CARES? There is no doubt about whether the Clinton campaign trashes Obama when they aren't making a Press Release. Samantha power wasn't trying to make an official statement. If the Scotsman published her offhanded comments, then they were more interested in sensationalism than news. Samantha Power isn't alone in her opinion of Hillary, this isn't news. Campaign staff trashes the opponent - big deal. When they lie to the press like the Clinton connection to NAFTA-gate or use 527s to trash an opponenet in the media it is a big deal.

Anyone who cares about the importance of the election should care about the politics of personal destruction regardless of who engages in it. Rather than add to the trashing, let's condemn it and suggest they get back to the real issues involved

Honestly, she was not speaking in an official capacity.....even asking that her comment be "off the record." An understandable mistake, but I am certain the ever so ethical Clinton campaign will whine until she resigns. Obviously, she was frustrated and merely giving voice to what many of us are already thinking.

It's absolutely absurd for anyone to complain about the paper quoting her, considering she waited until after she made the comment to request that it be off the record. Anyone who works in the news industry knows the ground rules here -- if you are speaking to a reporter and want to go off the record, you have to ask for permission from the reporter
BEFOREHAND, and then you can start calling hillary clinton a monster.
Samantha Power is an admirable figure in a lot of ways, but she clearly dropped the ball here.
Frankly, it seems a little ridiculous that you would put a post up here wondering about how this works as if it's all some great mystery.

I honestly cannot believe that you have to tell people beforehand that you want to be off the record. As an academic (like Samantha Power), I always respect my interviewees requests to keep anything "off the record", even if they call and make that request a day or week or month later (unless I've already published and I always tell them my timeline).

"After the event," claims the Scotsman!? How 'bout mid-sentence!
That "journalist," her editors, and her publisher have no journalistic ethics (of course, just as Hillary has no political ethics. Indeed, Samantha got axed 4 telling the truth.)

Mike Nelson says he'll keep things off the record if someone calls weeks after an interview. That might be how it works in academia, but not in journalism, where I've worked for more than 30 years. A journalist's responsibility is to the truth and to the reader, not to the interviewee. The standard always has been that things are not off the record unless that ground rule is agreed upon before the interview. Some reporters will make rare exceptions for interviewees who have never dealt with reporters before and have no idea how the game is played, but Samantha Powers certainly doesn't fit within that category. She just blurted out something, then realized her mistake and tried to get it back. I could give you dozens of examples of dumb things people said that cost them dearly who would have liked to declare them off the record after they said them.
The comments that Powers has been making in Europe are newsworthy because she has been one of his key advisers on Middle Eastern issues. The press has written little about his policy stands, and focused instead on his style and speaking ability.

There are no rules. The rules go to the highest bidder or the largest blade. Which ever comes first. Everything else is a word-smithing seduction. Rule number one. Never say anything that you dont want repeated especially when speaking to trolls or about trolls.